‘DECORATED LETTER’: TEXT AND IMAGE INTERTWINED

Illuminated manuscripts often fetch high prices at auction, teach art historians about earlier times and artists, and dazzle viewers with elaborate designs in brilliant blue, blood red and gold leaf. But who would assemble an exhibit of 17 individual letters from these books?

The J. Paul Getty Museum would. And with good reason, says Ranee Katzenstein, assistant manuscripts curator for the Getty, where “The Decorated Letter” opens Tuesday.

“First, the letters (which, like the first letter in this article, begin words and are larger than any others in a text) are the format for an awful lot of decoration in illuminated manuscripts,” Katzenstein said during a telephone interview.

“Second, they are unique to illuminated manuscripts. No other work of art has something like that.

“And third, they raise the issue of the relationship between text and image. The question of how stories are conveyed through images is pertinent to all the arts. In illuminated manuscripts, we can focus on that issue in a special way, and particularly with decorated letters, the relationship between text and image is remarkably close.”

That is, decorated letters may suggest the tone of a text, whether they appear in books of prayer, law codes or sheet music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, said Katzenstein, who has just completed her doctoral dissertation on 14th-Century Venetian manuscripts at Harvard University.

“You might have a majestic gold letter in a sacred text,” she said, or the letters may be used as frames enclosing a painted narrative illustrating the text to come.

“For example, there’s a 15th-Century Italian choir book in the exhibit, a very large book of music. One of its verses, a chant, begins, ‘Long, long had I been watching, behold now do I see God coming in power as in a cloud of light.’

“In Latin, the word for watching begins with an a , and the a has been transformed. You see God in the a and the whole background is brilliant high-burnished gold, which gives you the sense of this cloud of light. So the picture not only illustrates the text, but it does so in a beautiful, almost poetic way.”

Other letters featured in the exhibit are decorated “with an almost exuberant mix of ornament, from antique jewelry to grotesque little figures, to hunters chasing centaurs, to birds and dogs,” Katzenstein said. The leafy outline of the letters themselves, she added, may be formed with “very beautiful, sometimes elegant scrolling gold vines.”

The Getty exhibit, to Oct. 4, features four main types of decorated letters from manuscripts ranging in size from five inches to four feet tall, Katzenstein said. All the works appear in 9th- through 16th-Century manuscripts from the British Isles, Germany and France. The early works were made by monks, the later ones often painted by professional artists.

Initially, larger manuscript letters were simply drawn, and served only the practical function of denoting a textual division, Katzenstein said.

“But artists and writers knew how to exploit an opportunity to express their own creativity and imagination.

“Illuminated manuscripts are a wonderful way to gain a great sense of the people who made and used them,” Katzenstein added.

“We have the text of their reading materials and we know something about the way they used the books--in prayer, for example. I enjoy thinking about the person behind a work of art as well as the artwork itself, and there’s something terribly immediate about a book that’s signed by its creator, who often took years to complete a manuscript, with a prayer that says ‘I’m so glad I’ve finished doing this now.’ ”

SEAL OF APPROVAL: The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art has been granted accreditation by the American Assn. of Museums. Accreditation certifies that a museum operates according to standards established by the museum profession, manages its collections responsibly and provides quality service to the public. Of nearly 6,000 museums nationwide, only 648 are currently accredited.

The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art “serves its population with distinction,” states the association in a La Jolla museum announcement. “Its collections are focused, important to the region and the field, and well managed. Its setting is idyllic, its programs are of the highest quality--directed by a talented staff--and its financial management is sound.”

SEND IN SLIDES: Women artists from Fresno to San Diego may submit slides to enter the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art’s seventh annual juried exhibition.

Two-dimensional artworks for the all-media exhibition may be a maximum of 48 inches long and wide; three-dimensional works may span a maximum of 6 feet in any direction.

To vie for entry, a maximum of three slides must be received by the caucus by Aug. 14. Entry fee for up to three slides is $15 for caucus members and $24 for non-members.

The exhibition, “Taboo & Power,” will be at Santa Monica High School’s Roberts Art Gallery, in two parts: “Power,” from Oct. 8-29, and “Taboo,” Nov. 5-26.

Mary Jane Jacob, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, is exhibition juror. For a prospectus, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Elfie Wilkins-Nacht, 1114 12th St., Santa Monica 90403.